It’s probably safe to say that media tends to refer to itself, in one way or another — and referring to literature, as opposed to other forms of pop culture, is one way to make just about anything a little more highbrow. Television, notoriously full of references and allusions, might be the worst/best culprit, and the most fun to hunt through for literary moments — after all, nothing’s more fun than seeing books on the boob tube. Here, you’ll find 50 of the greatest and most memorable literary allusions, shout-outs, cameos, and references on television, as well as real-life author appearances and whole episodes, or even whole seasons, based on… Read More

The television world moves so fast that by the time you learn of a show’s premiere, it could already be canceled. It’s hard to keep track of the constant stream of television news, so Flavorwire is here to provide a weekly roundup of the most exciting — and baffling — casting and development updates. This week: Luther gets a BBC miniseries and an American adaptation, Hot in Cleveland finally gets canceled, and SNL announces its December lineup.
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Ten years ago today, Lost premiered on ABC and launched a new world of television, effectively becoming America’s new water-cooler show. The drama remains divisive (the ending!), but there’s no denying the impact it had on TV and the way we talk about TV. Lost was absolutely inescapable; fans shared theories, the cast took over media, and the showrunners became celebrities. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse created such an intricate and engaging show that fans made them just as popular, if not more, than the actors — for better or for worse, as Lindelof even famously quit Twitter. They were praised as much as they were scrutinized, and Tara Bennett’s Showrunners: The Art of Writing a TV Show (a companion to the documentary) remarks on the showrunner-as-celebrity phenomenon. In this exclusive excerpt, WGA Showrunners Training Program Founder Jeff Melvoin and Damon Lindelof himself discuss how Lost changed showrunning and the way we view showrunners.
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Love triangles have long been a staple on television shows, often used as a means to introduce a little drama into a relationship that has grown stale. Writers are always looking for ways to keep long-lasting relationships fresh and interesting to audiences, and one way to do that is by bringing in a third character to shake things up. Love triangles are also a way to provoke fan debates and discussions, splitting a show’s core audience into teams — think of how the majority of conversations surrounding Veronica Mars are more about Team Piz vs. Team Logan than any of the mystery plots. Without a doubt, love triangles are a fun thing to get invested in, but more often than not, these storylines bog down shows and take the focus away from other, better storylines.
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There was a mystery afoot on the Internet yesterday. Did you hear about it? Were you drawn into it? There was a trailer for a new J.J. Abrams… something. It had no title, only vague imagery and voice-over, and an ending tagline of “Soon he will know.” But it opened with the animation for Bad Robot, the Lost producer and Star Trek director’s production company, so everyone went bananas. “What is J.J. Abrams teasing with Bad Robot’s new mystery trailer?” asked The Verge. “What is J.J. Abrams’ ‘Stranger’ Teaser?” wondered Rolling Stone. Slate’s David Haglund, while granting that it looks “interesting, for now,” asked, “What is it a trailer for? He didn’t say! Could be a movie, could be a TV show — who knows! It is all very mysterious.” And Entertainment Weekly offered up five theories as to what, exactly, we were looking at. But it became clear, in the hours after this giant non-event, that the clip was a teaser for S., a novel by Doug Dorst, “devised” by J.J. Abrams, whatever the hell that means. So here’s the question: why do we care?
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